Organized Labor

Team #2

Craig Hartman of San Francisco-based architects Skidmore Owings & Merrill (SOM) said that, “In a single stroke, this design will redefine for the world San Francisco’s architectural, urban and environmental intentions.” He said that, “the design for the new Transbay Transit Center will preserve and enhance the exceptional qualities of the City – the beauty of the light, climate, topography, bay, and City—as well as its people, while embodying a potent belief in the region’s future.” He called the proposed Transit Tower, “a defining building for 21st Century San Francisco, which serves as the beacon for the new center and will act as an economic and cultural catalyst for the neighborhood and the City.”

SOM is partnered with Rockefeller Group Development Corp. The architectural firm’s projects include San Francisco’s Bank of America Center and San Francisco International Airport’s International Terminal. The Rockefeller Group is a commercial real estate corporation best known as developer of Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center.

The SOM plan calls for shortening the length of the existing four-block-long overhead bus deck to two city blocks to reduce the distance the busses have to travel – reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions and opening two city blocks to more light. “This innovation accommodates the entire transit program and improves operational efficiency while freeing two full city blocks for two significant civic gestures: a light-filled Transbay Hall – a dramatic arrival hall equal in scale to that of Grand Central Station – and a city-block-sized ‘opportunity site’ or Performing Arts Park, “Hartman said. The Transbay Hall would be open on all sides.

SOM’s proposed 1,375-foot mixed-use Transbay Tower would have its first full floor 100 feet above a one-block urban plaza at Mission Street. It would include retail, cultural, office space, a boutique hotel, condominiums, and, at the top, a publicly accessible sky room. Hartman said the tower’s tapered, turning structure is unique among U.S. skyscrapers. Brian Lee of SOM said that the building would look like the Eiffel Tower and be, “a vertical mixed-use city within the city.”

Hartman said his firm’s design would also meet the LEED Platinum requirements. He added that since his firm is based in the City, the project for them would be “a labor of love for our city.”

Two state-of-the-art wind turbines would sit atop the tower, and, combined with a photovoltaic crown, would reduce annual mechanical electrical consumption by 74 percent, according to the architect. The project also would harvest rainwater and use natural ventilation and natural light. Hartman said that after the first decade of operation, the project’s combined reduction in emissions, compared to a conventional design, will be over 176,000,000 lbs of carbon dioxide.

Hartman said the structure would be built to withstand a “2,500 year” earthquake, through a base isolation structural system with redundancy built in to re-distribute the load if one part of the structure is damaged.